If you are a woman who wants to have a better education, a bigger voice in government, considerably less risk of dying while pregnant, more equality with men, and better living conditions all around, you want to live in a pro-choice country. And as a man who thinks that equality is essential to a civil society, so do I.

This month the UN reports that the world population will hit a significant population milestone, 7 billion people. This has meaning for us all, especially in its environment and development impacts – and women are key.

As we pass the seven billion mark, it’s easy to get caught up in numbers. But the only reason those numbers mean anything is because of the individual lives behind them. In order to make the most of this moment and all those to follow, we need to lead every conversation about numbers with rights.

Reaching seven billion people on planet Earth has prompted renewed debates about the balance between population size and consumption of natural resources, about age structure and political stability, and about the consequences of rapid population growth rates for poor countries’ ability to develop economically. To a large extent, however, these macro-level dilemmas reflect a micro-level problem about which there is a universal consensus and where the solution is relatively straightforward.

The attention being paid to climate change is much deserved but some advocates worry that it will revive many of the old alarmist debates on population and with it the calls for “population control” that almost always target poor women and women of color.

Today is World Contraception Day. It’s actually a day just like any other, because it’s a day when so many women worldwide remain without access to birth control or other reproductive health services, and in which reproductive choice for all women remains an elusive goal.

With the global population expected to surpass 7 billion, we can only expect that the unmet need for family planning services, which currently exists for an estimated 215 million women globally, will only increase.